Trunk Wax

Book excerpt: TrunkWax: Delahunt at Large begins in the small Northern California town of Pylewood, when Jim Delahunt finds himself trapped by his wife at the bottom of an empty ten-thousand-gallon pickle barrel. Employing tricks acquired from over fifty years of experience as a merchant seaman, machinist, and cattle rancher, he frees himself and hooks up with two disgruntled buddies: a cowboy with two bad knees and a tightly wound organic farmer. Together, they hatch a plot aimed at getting him revenge, earning money for a double knee replacement for the cowboy, and commercializing TrunkWax, a microbial concoction that the organic farmer believes will revolutionize fruit cultivation. When Delahunts part of the plan takes him to China, he gets kidnapped in Inner Mongolia by a Manchurian ex-cop. He is subsequently rescued by a group of international polo players, flown back to the United States, and reunited with his wife. Over breakfast, they both realize his incarceration in the barrel was pretty much the result of poor marital communication.